Friday night football games

Last Friday, was an exciting night for me. It was one of the first football games of my alma mater that I was able to watch in a couple of years. I have worked Fridays since I was 18 and have rarely found myself with time to go watch.

Fordyce was playing Smackover this weekend at Smackover and my parents were going.

Now my team lost, but it was a fair win and, quite frankly, I had a lot of fun just being able to watch the game with my parents. I’m too old to know anyone that is playing anymore so going to the game was purely for nostalgia purposes.

One thing I hated to see during the game was the amount of injured players, as well as the coaches’ reactions.

Two players, who I will refer to by their jersey numbers, 10 and 4, were injured at the game.

No. 4 was injured before halftime, about half way through the second quarter. He sat on the sideline in pain after being carried off the field by his coaches for about 15 minutes.

During that time, he was generally ignored by the coaching staff and Fordyce does not have a trainer to assess the injury. This kid’s mom climbed through the bleaches down to the field to check on him.

Right before halftime, an EMT finally got to the boy and he was taken out via ambulance.

After him, No. 10, who had already sat out previous games for a hurt arm, came out during the last

quarter of the game with an arm industry.

This boy sat on the sideline in tears because of the pain. Boys are conditioned not to cry, so for him to be sitting in front of a crowd of people in tears shows how much pain he was truly in.

Just like the first boy, 10 sat on the sideline basically ignored by the staff and it wasn’t until his stepmom climbed down to check on him that any of the coaches appeared to become concerned with checking on the situation.

After they got him out of his jersey and shoulder pads, it was obvious that the boy’s arm could not go above his shoulder. So he sat on the sidelines with an injured arm for most of the fourth quarter of the game.

Needless to say, after watching the way the staff, most of whom were coaching when I was in school, treated the kids they were in charge of, my game experience was less than impressive. In fact, I was so disappointed in the way these men conducted their business, I am glad that my child will not be playing football under them one day.

When it comes to high school ball, although winning is nice, your job is to take care of the boys on your team like they were your own and give them the skills to take football as far as they can. Even if that means coaching their son’s pee-wee team one day.

You take care of these kids because many of them view their team as a brotherhood and they look up to you. The way you act will influence they way they act in the future. There were so many things that could have been handled differently, and I

wish they would have.